Posts Tagged ‘Opposition’

Last week, the Libyan rebels opposed outside intervention in their ‘revolution’. However, today Council spokesman Abdel-Hafiz Hoga said the council urged airstrikes on the “strongholds of the mercenaries …. used against civilians and people.”

But who are these mercenaries we here so much about? And why does a patriotic group want western military to attack the ‘mercenaries’?

Black-skinned mercenaries are blamed by the ‘rebels’ for attacking the lighter-skinned Libyan from the Cyrenaica region. In fact, Time magazine found a detention center in Shehat that held 200 supposed ‘mercenaries’:

“A group of men from al-Baida executed 15 of the suspected mercenaries on Friday and Saturday in front of the town’s court house. They were hanged, says the country’s former Justice Minister Mustafa Mohamed Abd Al-Jalil (who recently quit and joined the revolution)… Indeed, many of the prisoners at the Aruba School are dual nationals — Libyans with roots in Chad or Niger.”

Some days later Time demurred on the captives actually being ‘mercenaries’:

“But the question of who exactly the mercenaries are has yet to be answered. Opposition members in Benghazi have said they are holding hundreds of suspected mercenaries from the battles, but the press has been denied access to them.”

The reporters actually interviewed only one suspect – who, it turns out, was from Fezzan Libya, not foreign. And only 5 out of the 200 were determined to be Chadian (who also could have held dual citizenship):

“Omar, like many others who were held here, was captured at the army base in al-Baida. All of the prisoners at the Aruba School had southern Libyan or foreign origins; they were dark-skinned, from towns deep in the Sahara desert. At least five were from Chad.”

“Esbak has personally arrested and released a number of individuals in recent days. But… ‘We’re not sure they were mercenaries.’ […] ‘After what happened here, we lost faith in every black guy that’s walking around,’ says one soldier in Benghazi. ‘So especially if he doesn’t have a passport, we just grab him.'”

One ought not to be surprised, given the history of race mixed into the tribal conflict in Libya. The ‘rebels’ are in fact of lighter skin and have battled many opposing tribes in the past, particularly the Tuareg and Tebu in southern Libya, which borders on Chad. And some of these have dual citizenship in Chad and Libya. The viciousness of this Berber-Fezzan hatred reared its head only 11 years ago in the same areas that are ‘liberating themselves’ today:

“Some of Libya’s indigenous 1m black citizens were mistaken for migrants, and dragged from taxis. In parts of Benghazi, blacks were barred from public transport and hospitals. Pitched battles erupted in Zawiya, a town near Tripoli that is ringed with migrant shantytowns. Diplomats said that at least 150 people were killed.[…] The all-powerful security forces intervened by shooting into the air.”

That is, the racial attack was stopped by Qaddafi’s security forces.

Today, the racial attacks are ballooning, but apparently only in the ‘liberated’ areas not controlled by Qaddafi. And the ‘revolution’ is daily looking more like civil war between opposing regions and alliances. So again one wonders, why would the self-described patriotic leaders of a Libyan rebellion call for airstrikes on Black opponents – who seem to be mostly Libyans?